Welcome to The Harmonic Series, a music review series - exclusive to Steemit - where I’ll be discussing music across many different styles and genres from metal, to electronic music, to jazz and beyond! I’ll be talking up exciting new releases, some of my personal classics, and anything else that I think is worth checking out. Some of the reviews I share will be brand new, and some will be from my personal archives. 

Read my first review for a brief mission statement on how I conduct my reviews and what to expect from the series!

Today’s review is an album that brings experimental composition techniques and sounds face-to-face with simply powerful and engaging electronic pop rock and ambient music:

Brendan Byrnes - Micropangaea (Split-Notes, 2017) 

Genre: Experimental

Style: Pop-rock, Microtonal, Instrumental, Electronic, Ambient

    If you’ve read some of my early reviews in this series, you might be familiar already with the music of Brendan Byrnes, and understand why I was so excited when this album came out. His prior album - Micropangaea - was my second review in this series, and I was intrigued and enchanted by the blend of electronic and rock elements all under the musical paradigm of microtonality. For those unfamiliar microtonal - or xenharmonic - music is generally considered to be any music that falls outside the traditional tuning of equal temperament, which is the basis of almost all music in the western consciousness, whether pop, rock, classical, or anything else. While some alternate tuning systems like just intonation and Pythagorean tuning approximate the same general 12-tone division of an octave used in equal temperament, the music that is most recognizably microtonal often divides the octave into other quantities of notes, achieving intervals and chords that can sound very alien to the ear of a western listener, and even alien to cultures with more microtonal tuning systems, by way of constructed and experimental tunings.

 
   This may sound like a lot of music theory and technical jargon, but what it translates to in practice can be something wonderful, inexplicable, and very frequently, incredibly fresh. Byrnes, a composer, singer, and guitarist hailing from LA, is at the forefront of microtonal music, and seems firmly committed to making it accessible to all listeners, providing both Neutral Paradise and Micropangaea for free, and featuring a couple videos on Youtube explaining the inner workings of his microtonal music, and even how to go about creating it yourself. It’s not just financially accessible however, it’s immediately sonically palatable to listeners of all stripes. Micropangaea was a colorful, expressive, and creative album on which each track used a different tuning system intended to represent a locale on the eponymous fictional continent. This resulted in the project as a whole feeling quite soundtrack-like, and with evocative titles like Fluorescent Desert and Glacial Reef, it even felt like it could be music from the levels of a sci-fi/fantasy video game. The tunings themselves never strayed into the somewhat academic construction of quarter-tone music (basically music featuring all the notes evenly between the ones in our 12-tone equal-tempered system), but rather used uneven and unusual divisions of the octave such as 22-EDO (meaning equal divisions of the octave) and 19-EDO, which provide very exotic palettes. 

   One of the best tracks on Micropangaea was Vacant City, the single track featuring vocals, and being an incredibly strong synthy pop-rock track, so when I saw that there were four tracks with vocals on Neutral Paradise, I was ecstatic. The vocal tracks on this album are at the core of the experience. Far from being just a composer, Byrnes is a tight songwriter as well. His vocals are confident, expressive, and full of attitude befitting a kickass pop rock band frontman (and indeed, he does have a band focused on creating this vocal and rock instrumentation based music, called Ilevens). After the short introductory track, which glistens and resonates with sympathetic overtones, we’re thrust into the hard driving grooves of Hysteria. This track sets off the thematic elements that underly this album, seemingly depicting various scenes from in and around a surreal and vivid future psychedelic Los Angeles, overgrown with alien or biomechanical plant life, as the album cover suggests. “We really got a taste for dropping out / a million miles away from thumping crowds,” Byrnes sings, somewhat wryly, referring to weariness of the “hysteria” of city life. This is sharply contrasted by the following track, Fluorescent City, which seems to be from the perspective of those who eagerly thrive in the excitement and intense pace of city living. Both songs are tied together by energizing and affirming house/techno pulses and infectious hooks, as if to imply that the pace continues regardless of ones perspective on it. 

   As the album plays out past the vocal tracks, it moves away from the distinct qualities of memorable pop tunes to a fluid and more overtly magical and contemplative space of instrumental tone paintings, giving more of an organic and seamless progression. Without words to guide and identify specific tracks, the music moves to affecting the listener in a much more subliminal way. The evocative Outside LA gives a window into what it might be like to hear this music as Byrnes - a synesthetic, who perceives color in direct connection with sound - himself. The sounds of seagulls, waves and cars passing in the distance give a vivid picture of the outskirts of a busy city, where the synthetic fades into the natural. It all feels like a journey away from the manmade world, where the human qualities disappear and a magically surreal beauty takes their place, rendering one speechless and enthralled. Particularly characteristic is Light Tunnels which evolves from a plaintive and stripped down texture of raked guitar chords that show off the exotic tonalities of the 22-EDO guitar to a grandiose and awe inspiring groove, over which his signature metallic synths and wide spacious reverbs morph and swell.  

   The textures on this album, both in the notes and in the sound design of the synths are just as extraordinary as the compositions themselves. Byrnes layers sounds so thickly and coherently that the end result is a tight rich mass of metallic wails, and strong resonances. These sounds all sit in luscious reverberant spaces that provide even more depth, and alongside this, the vocals linger in echoing delays that reinforce the aching and pleasurable languor of the more unusual timbres and harmonic flourishes. The subtlety with which the unconventional harmonies and melodies are implemented surpasses Micropangaea, and their transfixing and unexpected character pokes through in accents and gestures, enhancing the music in the way that a singer might embellish or inflect. The drums here sound thick, and have an unrelenting, pounding intensity. In line with the heavy synth elements, they ring out reverberantly, evoking the drum production of popular 80’s music, but with more nuance and richness. When the guitar takes its own melodic lines - and even the occasional solo - the expressive qualities of the alternate tunings are pushed to the forefront, with exceptionally decisive playing that doesn’t waste a note backing it all up. 

   Brendan Byrnes does what so many hope to do in experimental music endeavors, crafting songs that prove the efficacy of nontraditional methods in creating music that’s simply great to listen to. With a stellar backing band and formidable sound design chops, he rides emotion high and hard, from his engaging synth-pop bangers to his fascinatingly imaginative ambient sketches and sparkling instrumental compositions. His palette has been expanded and developed on this album, and he’s shown a true progression - a strong feat, considering he set such a high bar on Micropangaea. Brendan Byrnes is someone to watch keenly in the experimental music world, and he’s cemented himself as simultaneously well rounded and decidedly individual in his vision and aesthetic. Neutral Paradise is a striking example and reminder that not all has been explored in music, and that there’s still magic to be found, whether it’s in the complex or the simple. 

To buy/stream Neutral Paradise, head over to Brendan Byrnes' Bandcamp page.

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